THE MAN.

Disaster struck the other day. The Sky box broke. We're not sure if this was because there was a wire hanging loose at the back, because the cat was sitting on it, or a combination of both. Anyway, whatever, we had to call THE MAN.

THE MAN came this afternoon and at first things went very well. He was chatty with Kath and I and made a fuss over Tia (he had a dog just like her). But then we hit an awkward patch when he mentioned he's been doing a lot of work for Polish families. He started saying things about 'foreigners coming over here' and he didn't mind that, so long as it didn't 'get silly.'

While he stood in the middle of the living room fixing the box, Kath and I sat, mouths open like fish, as he carried on: 'My parents live up in Yorkshire and my nephews are at school and they don't know anything about Christianity. They're being told all about all these other religions.'

When he realised we weren't about to agree with him about what he was saying, he said, 'Mind you, there's an Indian family who I fixed the Sky dish for and they work bloody hard,' and finished his coffee in silence. Then off he went.

Creepy.

Anyway, besides that bigoted interlude to the day, I've had a kind of productive day. I woke up feeling a little ropey from last night and read my book on the sofa for a while before getting on with some work. Oh, and good news. I've been asked to a job interview in town on Tuesday of next week, which I hope goes well. Fingers crossed. It sounds like a nice place to work and it's local, so that's what I'm looking for really.

Tonight I've been cracking on with my synopsis, trying to get it from three pages down to one or one and a half at the most. It's not meeting me halfway, so I'm going to leave it till tomorrow.

Looking forward to the weekend, even though I have loads to do. I'm meeting Sara on Monday for some help in getting my website updated with new work, so need to get that organised, and am meeting Andy in Fowey on Sunday, which will be an adventure. Also need to do a dummy run to this company before Tuesday as I have visions of not being able to find it and having a crash with a deaf man again. But that's a whole other story.

xx

Chicken breast with crushed up garlic cloves as a coating isn't a very nice meal.

I think I may have just entered a dangerous zone. I spent the last hour working on a paragraph in which a character opens a wardrobe, out some clothes, picks up a radio, and walks to another room.

Why would I do this to myself? Because I thought there were too many passive sentences. Isn't that sick? Still, I guess it's good I can read the first three chapters and only find fault with something like that. Oh, and the fact that someone who was pregnant five years ago only just had her baby. Stupid me.

Anyway, I'm planning on getting my first agency package together by the end of next week. I've got three or four that I want to approach and most ask for the first three chapters, synopsis, and covering letter, so I'm going to work on the last two this week in between job applications and look over a hard-copy of the first three chapters. It's all very exciting, if a little scary.

So, other than writing, I've not done a great deal today. I filled in another job application form, learnt that cooking chicken breast with crushed up garlic cloves as a coating isn't a very nice meal, and had another run-in with the bank about my credit car going missing for a second time. What a day!

xx

It felt as if someone had slammed by entire body in a car door.

I've been putting it off long enough, but no more. I couldn't let my blogginglessness get to two months. It would have been too much. And so I'm reviving it now so that it's not some lifeless limb of a link tacked onto my website.

So, I finished the course and am really happy with the results, and now looking for a job to tide me over while I carry on writing.

Two things I've learnt while job-hunting in Cornwall: there are a lot of openings for 'personal care', and having studied an MA for the past year is the equivalent of being in a coma if you're approaching an employment agencies.

I trudged around Truro the other week and dropped my CV into places, telling them I was looking for part-time/full-time/temporary/permanent work, and two of them said,

'You're going to find it hard in Cornwall as you've been out of work for a year.'

'But I've been studying. It's not like I've been out of work for years.'

'We'll keep you on file.'

Excellent. Anyway, that was only two of a possible six, so I'm not completely disheartened. Yet.

Employment agencies are funny old places though. I went into one and had to do all these tests, one of which was typing to see your accuracy and speed. They give you a document to onto the machine and you have five minutes to get as far as you can.

Now, I don't have a recruitment background, but if I had the choice of what to give people to copy, it wouldn't be something that begins along the lines of, 'In this modern, fast moving world, it's extremely difficult to find long-lasting employment.'

Talk about kicking you while you're down. Anyway, I got an average speed of 55 words per minutes and humiliated myself again by not knowing (or caring a great deal) what 'mail-merging' is.

So, that's how I've been spending the last few weeks: filling in applications, looking for jobs, and getting some more writing done. I'm on chapter seven now, but have made a lot of revisions to the work I handed in, mainly changing it to present tense and introducing a third character in the second chapter as opposed to the first.

Oh, and how could I have forgotten. I was a life-model about two weeks ago. A friend of Kath's runs an adult (not as in Adult Channel) art class and needed a male nude. Why not? I thought, and said I'd do it.

And it was actually fine. Once the towel was off, I was fine. I guess I was nervous before, but it was kind of like getting into the sea or something. The build up is worse than the actual doing it. What did I learn from this naked session? Well, mainly that if you've been in a certain position for half an hour, sompletely still, it's not a good idea to up right away really quickly. It felt as if someone had slammed by entire body in a car door. Horrible.

Anyway, that's it for now. I think, like withthe life-modelling, I need to warm up to get back into blogging again. I think this was enough to get started again.

xx